"... dirtier because of higher carbon emissions..." Shows an obvious bias. I would also question this because petcoke is a hydrocarbon and coal is just carbon. The sulfur can be scrubbed as it burns. This leaves the dust and heavy metals as legitimate concerns, but those can be ironed out. Better to burn this for energy than to waste it.

That Matty Moroun is involved in something dirty doesn't surprise me. He fought against legislation that would help pay for a new bridge that would join Detroit and Windsor (and cut into his private bridge, the Ambassador Bridge, profits).

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality said it was not aware of the massive black pile until this week, but confirmed Tuesday it is not necessarily a dangerous material.

“It can be sold as it does have a combustion value to someone,” said Andy Hartz, southeast Michigan district coordinator for MDEQ. “It’s storage is not something that requires a permit from us. It is listed as a non-hazardous substance by the federal government.”

It seems people care more about looks than anything else. So for some reason having these big piles out in the open is bad, but having those same piles somewhere out of sight is OK? That makes no sense for people that don't own land or have any kind of financial vestige to think they have some say in how land is used when what's happening isn't being found to break any laws.

The only thing I can see as annoying about this practice is an increase in dust for the people in the surrounding areas. That would get annoying having a coat of black dust all over everything. And in that case, I can see them being required to wet-down the coke & cover the mounds to hold the dust problem down. But the use of the land in this way doesn't seem like it is anybody's business other than those selling & buying the coke and the code inspectors confirming that the handling is being done in a lawful way.

And you may wonder why the city of Day-twah has been in decline.I just want to live theere.Sad theat theis stuff is shipped to China.thee results are thee same, destroy yet anotheer city or two.Shame thee industry could not have found anotheer way to use theis by-product.

It is true there is a big difference between sweet crude and tarsands bitumen.

FROM THE ARTICLE:

The petroleum coke — or ‘Petcoke’ as It’s called — recently started to be produced in much greater amounts at the nearby Marathon Oil refinery in Detroit.

The refinery, which sits behind Zug Island next to the I-75 freeway, completed a massive $2-billion facility upgrade last fall allowing it to process heavy Canadian crude oil brought in by pipeline from the Alberta oil sands. The refinery processes 120,000 barrels per day of crude oil.

Petroleum coke is a fine powder which gets distilled and filtered out from the crude. It’s resold for such uses as producing asphalt or as a replacement for coal.

Power plants have increasingly turned to burning Petcoke because it is 25 per cent cheaper than coal, said Stockman, who authored on a recent report on the growing use of the fuel and its environmental impacts.

Petcoke looks and burns like coal, but is dirtier because of higher carbon emissions, Stockman said. Although not officially listed as a toxic or hazardous product, it can contain heavy metals or sulphur found inside tar sands crude oil, he said.

“You wouldn’t want this stuff in your water (being next to the riverfront),” he said. “It could be leaching heavy metals and sulphur.”

Petcoke has been handled in refineries in Texas, Louisiana and California, but is often loaded directly on to ships and sent overseas to be burned in locations such as China, Stockman said.

“They don’t keep it on site for long periods,” he said. “They export millions of tons of the stuff.”

Based on the amount of barrels being processed in Detroit, Stockman estimated 1,720 tons of coke were being produced daily.

“It’s a byproduct of the dirtiest oil on the planet,” he said. “That’s what they are trading in.”

Marathon “goes above and beyond regulations” while handling petcoke on site, Daniels said. “It a very powdery substance so it’s kept in bins or covered to keep it from blowing around. Everything is covered and kept tight. It’s not something volatile or toxic, but since it is a fine powder there is a messiness factor when dealing with it.--------------- Refering to the picture in the article; Are the bins and coverings under that huge mountain of petcoke?

"Windsor’s residents might be in store for another whammy if Detroit Edison cuts a deal to purchase the petcoke to burn at its downwind coal-burning power plants in Monroe and River Rouge, said Stockman."

Like anything else it should be stored properly & if used in the USA proper USAge with appropriate pollution prevention should be used. Same applies to anywhere but of course we can't dictate what laws other countries approve, only make suggestions, unless the issue is worth a war.

"Dealing with such massive quantities of petroleum coke — especially those being generated from Alberta tar sands — is a relatively new issue for MDEQ, which is trying to get up to speed on the product and where it falls under regulations, Hartz said.

Since last fall, a new crude oil pipeline has been bringing heavy crude to Detroit from Alberta, confirmed Brandon Daniels, a spokesman for Marathon Oil. He also verified that petcoke has started being produced in much greater amounts since the refinery’s expansion in November.

He couldn’t say whether CSX and Transflo has been the sole customer taking in all the petcoke from the refinery, but Marathon in Detroit has been “selling it on the open market.”"

Chemically speaking, this is one of the dirtiest forms of energy around. The Chinese will use it and burn it and pollute the whole world. Watch out for even the slightest spill near the Detroit River or say goodby to millions of gallons of drinking water.

"Coal or coke being stored along the Detroit River has long been linked to tumours in fish, said University of Windsor researcher Doug Haffner, who studies exposure and impacts of chemicals in the Great Lakes. He described it as a bigger problem than mercury or PCBs.

“The biggest issue on the Detroit side is they are storing it right on the shore, so with any rain it moves right into the river,” he said. “You couldn’t put this in a worse place. Unless they are treating the runoff — and I doubt that — this should not be allowed in this day and age.”"

This is a Windsor Star followup to an earlier article that was also posted here early yesterday. This has full details on what was previously reported as mysterious huge piles of black powder appearing on the Detroit side of the Detroit River. The piles are adjacent to and below the Windsor Bridge owned by a notorious and controversial billionaire that owns both this land and the bridge!

"The refinery, which sits behind Zug Island next to the I-75 freeway, completed a massive $2-billion facility upgrade last fall allowing it to process heavy Canadian crude oil brought in by pipeline from the Alberta oil sands. The refinery processes 120,000 barrels per day of crude oil.

Petroleum coke is a fine powder which gets distilled and filtered out from the crude. It’s resold for such uses as producing asphalt or as a replacement for coal.

Power plants have increasingly turned to burning petcoke because it is 25 per cent cheaper than coal, said Stockman, who authored on a recent report on the growing use of the fuel and its environmental impacts.

Petcoke looks and burns like coal, but is dirtier because of higher carbon emissions, Stockman said. Although not officially listed as a toxic or hazardous product, it can contain heavy metals or sulphur found inside tar sands crude oil, he said.

“You wouldn’t want this stuff in your water (being next to the riverfront),” he said. “It could be leaching heavy metals and sulphur.”

Petcoke has been handled in refineries in Texas, Louisiana and California, but is often loaded directly on to ships and sent overseas to be burned in locations such as China, Stockman said.

“They don’t keep it on site for long periods,” he said. “They export millions of tons of the stuff.”"